Dread's End
by Crazyeight
Summary: A former servant of Melkor rides once more to war and on the fields of Pellenor, finds his last battle.


Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the Rings

Dread's End

A Lord of the Rings Story by: Crazyeight

He felt it then, the burning in his chest as the Elf-lord speared him with the spike on his helm – an irony, he might have thought, wreathed in flames as he was, but such things were beyond him now. Only a bright shock of pain splintering across the whole of his body – the body that had slain kings and done glorious service to his lord and master, Melkor the Great, Lord of the Earth. Falling backward, crashing into the great fountain behind him, taking his mauled and battered foe into it, his agony was swiftly accompanied by the furious hissing of the water clashing with his flames. Battle, it seemed, found a new field, and the fountain _thirsted_ for his end.

Reflexively, he pushed his might into his fires, tightening his grip around his thrashing enemy, caught between the two elements like white-hot steel on an anvil beneath the pounding strikes of a hammer. It did little to delay the inevitable, though it hastened the end of his foe, Ecthelion, who gave one final spasm before falling still.

 _Dead…_ Gothmog laughed, and the waters rushed in to fill the lungs of his body, and then the darkness took him.

It did not last however. His vision found him rising above the ruin of his demonic corpse, black blood clouding the Fountain of the King, fires gone, his axe and whip vanished from view. The body of the Elf-lord lay with him, burned beyond recognition in his grasp. Gothmog felt a tinge of pride at having taken the lord of Gondolin down in his defeat, but this victory was greatly eclipsed by its pyrrhic nature. Shadowy smoke was all that remained of him at the present – his _fëa,_ now separated from the _hröa_ he worked so hard to build with his power into a vessel worthy of serving Melkor.

 _Weak…_ he thought as the winds pushed at the remnants of his spirit. _I've lost my strength. So much of my power…gone…_

He would need time. Time to regain strength and build a new body before he could return to his service. Mairon was capable, and with his sorceries he had no doubt that with Gondolin's fall, finishing up the conquest of Beleriand would be mere child's play. The power of the Elves was broken, and the mortals – Men – were scattered. All were easy pickings.

Slipping away, he hid himself, resting, growing…something that proved difficult. Far too much of his power, he realized, had been invested in his old raiment and with that gone…

 _A shadow… I am little more than a shadow and a whisper…_

Sun and moon rose and set afterward, and Gothmog watched Melkor's kingdom crumble as the lords of the west, finally roused, came like a storm, shattering the whole of Beleriand with their wrath, overturning the ruins of kingdoms and the breaking open fiery mountains of Thangorodrim before sinking them beneath the waves.

Watching the ruination of Melkor's empire as it drowned beneath the waves, he was reminded of his own fall, his life slipping away beneath the water, the corpse of the Elf-lord clutched tightly in his grasp.

Turning away, his spirit fled the devastation, seeking sanctuary, to rest and grow again.

Time passed, and the Ages went with it. He saw Mairon – now calling himself the Dark Lord of Mordor – rise like a shadow of their master and wage his wars against Elves and Men, fall, grow and return…and now, on the cusp of victory, with legions beyond counting, poised to crush the last remnants of resistance.

The Elves were no longer strong enough to resist the Sorcerer, and they were now fleeing across the ocean to the Undying Lands. Men were all that remained, and they were… _weak._

His power was far less than it had been under Melkor, but eagerness for battle against their ancient enemies grew within him. Taking what strength he had left to him, he clad himself once more, lower than any form he took before, and little better than a Man.

 _Little better than a Boldog,_ he had mused when he bent knee to Sauron, swearing allegiance to his former comrade. Thinking on those Maiar who took the shape of Orcs and how he was reduced to their level angered him, but he found himself heading the massive army of Sauron all the same – even if he stood beneath the Wraiths – and at his command, he took it into the realm of Gondor, eager to smash the gates of Minas Tirith.

There, on the fields of Pellenor, in battle with horse lords and the dead, he would suffer his final fall, following his allegiance with Melkor into its final darkness.

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A/N: Mostly trying to get my writing shoes back on and I wanted to try something different with regards to fandoms. Burnouts are not fun to deal with, and I'm afraid the quality of my work has suffered for it. That aside, Gothmog's fate following his death in Gondolin's fall has been a bit of a puzzle on my mind since he never returned the way Sauron did, and from what I'm able to gather, they were of fairly comparable strength as Maiar (and Sauron's first body was more thoroughly destroyed than Gothmog's during Numenor's drowning). Given his emphasis on martial prowess and being Lord of the Balrogs, I imagine that he invested a great deal of his strength in his body, much as Sauron did with the One Ring and Melkor with Arda, and when that body was destroyed, much of his power went with it. In all likelihood, he put so much of his fëa into it that he became as Sauron when the ring was unmade, disembodied and with little ability to grow again, though how much of this case resembles Sauron is uncertain

The Gothmog who appears briefly in Return of the King is never explicitly stated to be anything other than just another commander of Sauron's army, so I took a bit of creative license with him being the original Gothmog taking on a newer, though vastly weaker, and more mortal form.

Hope the story was entertaining in spite of its flaws. Until next time.

-Crazyeight

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